Chengdu Zoo

So when I'm working on this blog I like to do a lot of extra reading for each post--news articles, academic articles, etc.--depending on the topic of the post. The point of this is to educate myself (and any possible readers) on a variety of issues related to China's Environment, things that I might not otherwise learn about since my specific focus for my masters thesis is wildlife and the use of bears in Traditional Chinese Medicine (I promise there will be more on that topic later, much more).

But for today's topic, which I'm going to sardonically call "A Trip to Hell the Zoo!" I don't want to read about it, talk about it, or think about it at all beyond just posting and labeling some photos. There are few things in this world that I love more than animals (yes, human rights and human equality rank higher), and there is little that distresses me more than seeing animals in a degraded state of existence. I would rather see an animal dead than see it live out its life like a bile-farmed bear or like any of these animals at the Chengdu zoo. They would be better off dead--and that's not hyperbole, I really really mean that.

But one of the things I hate more than seeing animals live like this, is seeing human beings who think that it is acceptable for animals to live like this. And I'm not naive-I understand why people have different viewpoints on animals and their place in the world, in fact, that's pretty much what I've devoted my life to studying. But I don't think there's any gray area in this case. With many zoos you can argue that the animals are teaching people about the importance of conservation, inspiring people to care, raising money for research, etc.

But so many of these zoo animals look and act like something with its mind excavated; ratty sacks of fur neurotically pacing the years away in a cement chamber. They aren't wild animals any more. I don't know what anyone could learn from them.

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Here's one of the panda enclosures. The cells are bigger than what the large cats get, but nothing like the nice habitat areas the pandas have at the Breeding and Research Center north of the city (pictures of that trip later). This was the first time I've ever seen a panda. They live up to their reputation of being cute and boring

Here are some of the tiger cages. I went behind the building to see if they had any considerable space away from this viewing area, but they were only tiny little rooms, maybe a fifth the size of their main rooms.

 

Here's the lion cell. I noticed that I was bothered more by seeing animals that I've seen in the wild. I lived in Tanzania when I was 11 years old, and I definitely saw a few of these guys out on the Serengeti.  

 

Here's an animal I often see out on mountains in Washington, the pika. Here he doesn't have any rocks to climb on; he just paces back and forth in that room.

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I doubt many dog-owners would think this was an acceptable place to keep their pet all the time. For wolves it's even worse, because they're pack animals accustomed to roaming long distances.

Before I get to the bears, I want to quickly post these photos of the token African animals--the giraffes have an outside enclosure with some tree access, but the elephant only has the outside space you can see in the photos, which doesn't include the empty space on the other side of the post fence. Elephants are also herd animals, designed to roam over long distances. Their sheer size makes them difficult to accommodate in captivity, and for that reason they are one of the most controversy-laden zoo animals.

Here are the brown bears. They've been taught to beg for food.  The larger bear growls and swipes to intimidate the smaller one (bears live alone in the wild), and then stands on his hind legs and waits for people to throw junky food at him. The guard nearby doesn't stop people from doing this.

Here's the polar bear. Yeah, that's right, they keep a polar bear in Chengdu, where most summer days the temperature is in the upper 80s/lower 90s. Polar bears have a thick layer of fat right under their skin that makes them prone to overheating (which is why they live in the fucking Arctic). While we were watching, some people came over and threw food at the polar bear's head. It bounced off her and she looked at it, but stayed very still. 

 
Done.